Chapter 5

Timeline: 4th of September 2012 (Evening/Night)

Tao followed three steps behind Kris instead of one as both of them made their way to the cellar first. He was afraid that he might do something wrong for his Daddy to hate him even more. Kris did not seem to notice anything weird about that. The walk towards the cellar was filled with ultimate silence.

"So, here's the cellar." The door creaked as Kris opened it with care. The hinges needed oiling and they were a rusty too. This house must have belonged to someone before.

"How did everyone find this house?" Tao asked curiously as he stepped into the cellar. In every corner, he could see all sorts of weapons of different kinds and sizes, ranging from guns and swords to arrows. Cool. But what was coolest was the sword that he had been using since young for Wushu training was there, held up high in the light streaming through the small window. With hurried steps, he walked towards it with awe.

"This house was built hundreds of years ago. The previous owner took us all in when our caretaker in the orphanage went bankrupt because of her drunken husband. These weapons belonged to him but he told us to use them before he took his last breath. I swear, the Goddess had her hand in this."

"I'm sorry to hear that the owner died. May he rest in peace."

Tao picked up his beloved sword. It was a bit dusty but someone had polished it recently. Every weapon in the cellar was well taken care of, it seemed, as he looked around.

"That's yours in the future?" Kris had come up behind him without realising it.

"Yeah." Kris was amused when he saw Tao's expression. It was like a child who had received early Christmas presents.

"Your Papa is in charge of swords. So, maybe you should ask him if you could use it. Though I'm pretty sure your Papa would let you." Kris said with a small smile. It looked like it was forced.

"Weapons are for non-elemental users like the both of us. Basically, those gifted with elements as their Supernatural Abilities like Chanyeol and Chen do not need these. They train their abilities more than us because theirs were more difficult to control. We, non-elemental users use weapons to fight and defend while our Supernatural Abilities are our bonuses. For example, I can fight the Red Forces with my gun. If need be, I'll use Flight so that they can't reach me and I can easily duck their bullets."

"My Time Control can't really do anything except to turn back time. I haven't tried freezing time because that would require a lot of concentration and energy.

So, weapons are for non-elemental users? I thought my Papa and I were the only ones who had to use weapons. I mean, GrandUmma D.O has the Earth element while Uncle Chanyeol has Flame but Godfather Luhan, I've never seen him carry a weapon before."

"Did your Mother have any abilities?" Kris cursed silently when he saw the dark look clouding over Lay's baby. When he blinked, the look was gone within a second.

Tao screeched in his mind, 'Mother?! Well, if you count whoever gave birth to me as my mother then Papa would be one. Oh, don't you ever let him hear that, Daddy or he'll kill you.'

Perhaps he should create a 'virtual mother' based of his Papa. There was no mother figure in his life. So he had no idea how one's mother should be like.

But then again, the fact was, his Daddy was an orphan too so, little lies here and there was nothing significant.

"Yeah, she had, Papa told me. But I wouldn't be able to judge since she had died during childbirth." No harm done to go with those small little lies. Okay, maybe they were big but whatever. In order to get closer to his Daddy, he would use any means to get his Daddy wrapped around his pinky. It was not like his Daddy knew anything about the future. He was the one withholding all the information after all.

Kris accepted Tao's answer with a nod as the younger boy played with the sword a little. Tao kissed the edge of the sword before placing it back on its shelf.

"How did... both of them meet?" Kris asked, uncertain whether he wanted to know the answer or not. If he knew, maybe he could stop their meeting and have Lay all to himself. But Lay was not bent. He was perfectly straight. If not, where do babies come from? It certainly does not pop out from two males. Unless...

Nah. He quickly discarded the thought of him and Lay having a son that goes by the name Tao. It was a possibility. Yes, but that was before Tao had confirmed that he had a mother. So, the probability of Kris himself being a father was almost zero to none. After all, he was no father material.

"Well..." Tao had seen those conflicting emotions in his Daddy and it was fun to . "The usual you get from a novel. Love at first sight on a street. Got a typical date and both were happily-married in a few years.

Please show me the other parts of the house. This house is like a mansion. One could get lost."

"Alright. We'll go to the room behind that door." Tao whipped his head around so fast Kris thought that it might break. There was a door perfectly hidden from sight. He was so surprised that he did not realise that his jaws were wide open.

"You might wanna close it or a fly would enter your throat and then your stomach" Tao snapped his mouth shut and glared at his Daddy playfully. He muttered something like, "Evil man."

Kris chuckled as he opened the door which led them into a hallway. There were a few rooms along it and Tao opened ajar one of them. The walls, the grounds and the ceilings were of steel. It was empty and there were no windows.

"Steel can withstand corrosion so it lasts longer than any other material. It is bulletproof too. The previous owner had built it and upgraded it. That was why I thought the Goddess had a hand in this. It seemed like he knew we were coming from the Goddess herself. It was just too much of a coincidence."

"Are other rooms like this too?" Tao asked while testing the ground by tumbling around. Kris was impressed by his skills. This kid was well-trained.

"Nope. Not all. Only one was made of Silica because it can withstand a higher temperature than steel. That room is used by Chen and Chanyeol because Lightning and Flame can melt the steel in this room. We had no idea about that previously. So when they used this room in the past, they melted the wall a little. As you can see here, the wall is a little crooked." Kris and Tao stared at it for a long time.

"Some of the rooms are equipped with dummies and bull’s-eye targets. Those equipped for dummies are for sword-users like your Papa and Luhan who uses daggers. So that explains why you can't see him carrying anything dangerous around him. He hides his daggers well in his clothes so you just have no idea how many of them he carries around with him. Bull’s-eye targets are for archers such as Kai and gun-users such as me and Baekhyun." Kris explained to the kid who came from the future. It has a nice ring to it, somehow... or maybe not.

"Cool. Maybe I could learn to use a gun here. I've always thought that guns were awesome stuff." Especially if his Daddy was the one using it. Maybe if he got lucky, he could watch his Daddy in action. That would be totally fantastic on so many levels.

"I could teach you if you want." Whatever possessed him to tell that to the kid? He hated his guts, remember? Well, not so much anymore ever since Tao told everyone that Lay was his Papa. Maybe he should treat him nicer. But if he ever found out that Tao was going to back-stab all of them, he was so going down. And Kris would make his death a really slow and painful one.

"Really?" Tao's eyes were sparkling like diamonds and they reminded him of Lay's. He forced another smile. "Sure thing, kiddo."

Tao cheered, clapping his hands happily as he hopped about in the room. This was definitely Lay's son alright.

Okay. So, maybe he could tolerate Lay's son fine enough. The Fate had after all chosen that he was not going to get Lay in this life. Lay was going to marry a nice girl who most probably would be his long lost cousin for all he knew. That was the only explanation he could get for the looks Tao had.

'Lay is as straight as a pole and we do not have a kid in the future,' he convinced himself.

But a small part of him was denying that fact. It was screaming at him that Tao was as much as his kid as he was Tao's father. Ridiculous, he knew. So, he stomped that part of himself down and shoved it into a deep corner in his brain.

"Let's get back upstairs. I'll show you the rest of the house after dinner." Tao nodded eagerly. "It's a promise! Race you to the top." Kris let Tao run off first while closing the cellar door and locking it. He was so confident that he could catch up to that kid easily. Boy, he had underestimated him. That kid could really run like a marathon. And here he thought he had no competition when it came to speed. Looks like his life was getting more and more interesting.

Timeline: 9th of September 2012

"Again!" A blonde yelled at his 'student'. Tao was getting frustrated. His Daddy was one heck of a teacher. He was getting tired. All of a sudden, taking up gun lessons was such a bad idea to him.

He squashed that thought away. Which was more important? Getting closer to his Daddy or giving up guns so he could just laze around? His Daddy, of course! Do you even need to ask? A little training with his Daddy would not hurt. In fact, it was very advantageous on so many degrees.

"Can I take a rest now?" He whined as Lay entered the room to watch his son. He wore bulletproof clothes and looked pretty funny in them.

"No. Continue for at least another hour. Then, we could take a short break." Kris said as he fired at a few bull’s-eye targets which were randomly popping out and then back in. The targets' movement were really quick and they were controlled perfectly by a computer in the room above them. In five seconds they were gone so you had to be really quick to shoot them down. The targets were replaced every week and his Uncle Baekhyun was an expert in fixing them. At the moment, his uncle was chatting up with his Papa.

Did he mention that his Uncle was good at dodging bullets too? You could distract him all you want but he could dodge each and every one of them fired at him. Tao wished he could learn that. It would be amazing. For Tao, he would need his beloved sword to deflect those vicious bullets.

He sighed and began firing again while wondering if his Daddy had been substituted by Hades while nobody was watching.

After one long hour, Tao got his desired rest. He slumped back against the wall, pulling up his clothes to wipe his sweat off. Someone handed him a cloth and a water bottle. He looked up and smiled at his Papa.

Lay took a seat in front of Tao and began to dab his face with another dry cloth. Tao felt like a kid, being babied by his Papa. It was a nice feeling.

"I've asked to borrow you from that strict Daddy of yours," Lay whispered after making sure that Kris was in another corner with Baekhyun. Imagine Lay's surprise when Tao told him about his Daddy and how both of his parents got married four days ago. Lay was overjoyed with the news. It was the best piece of news he had ever heard for the week. It meant that he had a good chance with Kris but of course, Kris had no idea that Tao was their son yet.

"Good. I need to get out from this room and away from Daddy Hades. He's torturing me on purpose." Tao sulked as Lay his hair which was wet with perspiration lovingly.

"Daddy Hades?" Lay chuckled.

Kris watched them from afar and exhaled loudly, momentarily forgetting that he was with Baekhyun. He wished that he could join them, as family but that was simply impossible. He was only an uncle to Tao. Not even a Godfather to him. It was saddening that Lay had chosen Luhan to be Tao's Godfather rather than him. It hurt badly.

"You're wishing you could join them, aren't you?" Baekhyun said softly while grinning from ear to ear.

"Wha-?" Kris stumbled when Baekhyun patted him. His eyes were twinkling mischievously as if he was up to something. Well, he was always up to something. And that something usually spelled 'not good' in Kris' dictionary.

"I do not wish to interrupt their family time, Baekhyun," said Kris adamantly with a poker face.

Baekhyun hummed in response as both of them watch both father and son interact. The two of them were thinking about the same thing. If only their parents were around to love them like how Lay loves his son. But all was not meant to be. What was the past shall remain a past they cannot erase. They could only move on and never look back again.

To be continued...

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Thank you, my Fantastic Babies~ LOL.

I would like to thank all of my amazing readers, reviewers and subscribers. Thank you for taking your time to read this. I am forever grateful for you lovely guys. Free Krispy Lays for everyone out there.